You know the further I play into this game, the more I'm convinced that the Eternia forces are run by a Captain Planet villain (that or he's secretly Skeletor; what with the whole Eternia region and all). Looting and Polluting indeed.

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The thing about the Floria region was that they were systematically abolishing their way of life by killing off the wildlife, especially the worshiped kind, destroying the environment, annexing the religion, and performing the odd bit of human harvesting in conjunction with the Time Mage and Merchant's profiteering and the Salve-maker's experimentation and refinement for something yet to be revealed.

Barbarossa's thing is that he's just an awesome pirate dude out on a cool quest for excellent adventure with his best bud and isn't even going to let a little thing like a decrepit ship, a dead pal, or death get in the way.

Also, I may need to actually buy Phoenix Downs given how many I've had to burn through lately. The Fire Temple boss and the Salve-maker both caused me to eat them like candy.

You know describing the villians in this game as Captain Planet villains describes them perfectly. Well maybe not fire continent, as they were (for the most part) competent. Although I really have to wonder:

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How the hell was the swordmaster leading this war with Edea completely unaware while she was training? Seems like something that she should have been aware of prior to meeting him there. Or to be more precise, seems like she should have been there with him at least once.....oh well whatever.

I really like salve maker and how it's competent beyond ffvs 'mix is OP, but I hope you have a spreadsheet handy'(Potion + phoenix down is pretty sweet though).

Chemist and Chemist-like jobs have, with exception to FFT (debatable since Auto-Potion is a fairly useful reaction ability for a good while through the game) and the TA games, been gamebreaking to some degree.

In FFV, Chemist abuse can lead to things like one-shotting the final boss.In FFX, Riku starts with it (but its probably at its least broken given how most of the useful combinations require items that needed elsewhere).In FFX-2, pair an Alchemist up with two Dark Knights and you're set for life.In 4HoL, Salve-maker made your items free, let alone boosting their effectiveness, allowing you to multi-target, and reverse their effects. Don't know what Alchemist does in this game since I never got that far.

That said, one neat thing is that when you're running through your options, is that you can see the name of what you're going to mix before you mix it thus making trial-and-error less annoying than it would otherwise be. Also the game provides a D's Journal sub-sub-section dedicated to listing every used mix result and a list of all possible item combinations needed to achieve it.

Finally defeated the summoner, and didn't even need to grind any more. I just really need to get better at taking advantage of Default, since that's what won the battle for me. Defeated the Ranger afterwards without a single problem.

This game is much harder than I was expecting. Started it last night and the ogres in random battles in the second dungeon with the black mage were tearing me apart so I had to go and do some grinding. I was level 5 and now I'm level 9 so hopefully it is a little bit easier. I know I could put it on easy, but it hurts my ego :P

This game is much harder than I was expecting. Started it last night and the ogres in random battles in the second dungeon with the black mage were tearing me apart so I had to go and do some grinding. I was level 5 and now I'm level 9 so hopefully it is a little bit easier. I know I could put it on easy, but it hurts my ego :P

Brave x4 and wreck them before they attack you. So many people don't bother going red on brave, it's completely worth doing though.

I've yet to bother with salve maker aside from just grinding it out for freelancer power up. My current squad is a spirit master with white magic, pirate with dark arts, vampire with ninjutsu, and templar with chivalry. My spirit master can cast level 1 cure on my whole team and heal over 5k per character. My pirate can use pretty much any dark art for near max damage. Vampire can absorb stats and just spam any attack, but I mostly use him for supplementary stuff like stealing with thief knife or debuffing enemies. Templar....well, that's just my laugh at damage person ( she clears 425 defense now, most attacks do 1 damage). The best thing about my set up is using adaptation on everyone on my spiritmaster and then spamming dark nebula on my pirate, everyone takes max dark damage, but adaptation gives my allies absorb elemental status, so free heals. It's ridiculously op.

I'd like to note even further, once you hit Chapter 3, the rabbit hole goes even deeper for the Red Mage!

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The last page of his Notes mentions Qada and his poison! He wanted to release it on the city.

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Its also implied that the women he's been seducing are being used to incubate a key component to Qada's toxin and that he was getting the funding from Khamer and Profiteur for the endeavor. Of course, the whole lot of them were apparently plotting behind Prince Adam's back for control over Eternia, which again, is why you don't hire ecoterrorists to do your dirty work.

I'd like to note even further, once you hit Chapter 3, the rabbit hole goes even deeper for the Red Mage!

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The last page of his Notes mentions Qada and his poison! He wanted to release it on the city.

Just wait, the big twist is a complete mindfuck. This game is dark for such kiddy looking characters.

The game has certainly has dark moments up to where I am up to right now (chapter 4), but the game also has some serious mood whiplash at times. At one point in the game I believe the events basically went like this (minor spoilers?): Let's get ready for a beauty pageant! -> LITTLE GIRLS MURDERING EACH OTHER! -> Jokes about bikinis that are unacceptable, oh that Ringabel. And my reaction to all of this was O.o da faq? The darkness just loses all of its impact for me because of the mood whiplash.